In the first episode of a five-part series, Jonathan Meades revisits the places his father (a biscuit rep) took him to as a child, in order to shed some light on his abiding obsession with buildings and places.

Jonathan Meades ponders the effects of the expensive craze of city regeneration and using 'landmark' buildings to get it.

Jonathan Meades tells the story of Letchworth, the first British garden city. A social experiment, its legacy is Britain's ubiquitous, banal sprawl. Yet it all started so charmingly with naked dew-bathers, vegetarian mystics and sandal-makers roaming through Hertfordshire clay fields.

Jonathan Meades visits Stowe - the greatest of Enlightenment landscapes, an enclosed world of the utmost pomp. Its gardens, lakes, woods and, above all, follies are to be interpreted by those with a grasp of the classics to which they refer.